8 Salesforce Buys Boost Analytics, Machine Learning Portfolio
SaaS-based enterprise application and CRM giant Salesforce has accelerated its acquisition pace recently, snapping up eight companies, large and small, over the past several months. Here's a look at some of the deals and what they reveal about Salesforce's strategy.
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Online CRM and enterprise applications provider Salesforce.com has been snapping up different companies, small and large, in a series of acquisitions over the past nine months. The deals have added a range of capabilities to the company's existing portfolio, including cloud-based word processing, quote-price-configure software, and e-commerce. But most of the acquisitions focus on analytics, machine learning, and deep learning.
CEO Marc Benioff has said that enterprise software and other systems that can analyze data and recommend the right course of action (that is, smarter and more predictive software) will shape the future of business software.
[See 10 Cool Machine Learning Startups To Watch.]
At a Forbes CIO event in March, Benioff said, "This will be the huge shift going forward, which is that everybody wants systems that are smarter. Everybody wants systems that are more predictive, everybody wants everything scored, everybody wants to understand what's the next best offer, next best opportunity, how to make things a little bit more efficient."
That's what many of these companies that Salesforce has acquired were founded and built to do.
The deal pace has accelerated in recent months -- seven companies in 2016 so far, two during this month alone.
Benioff has been very vocal about his goal for Salesforce to reach $10 billion in annual cloud revenue, and the company has gotten closer, posting over $6 billion during its last fiscal year and projecting over $8 billion for the current fiscal year.
Salesforce plans to announce its second-quarter revenue and earnings on Aug. 31. In its first-quarter earnings call, the company raised its full-year guidance from $8.16 billion to $8.20 billion.
Certainly these data, analytics, and machine learning deals are intended to help the company achieve that goal. Here is a selection of Salesforce's acquisitions over the past several months.
Salesforce acquired this business analytics platform in mid-August. Salesforce CEO Benioff said in a tweet that the company bought BeyondCore to enhance the AI capabilities of the Salesforce Analytics Cloud. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Salesforce announced this $582 million all-stock acquisition in an SEC filing on August 1. Quip is a bit of a departure from the analytics theme. Quip offers a cloud-based word processing application that is designed to minimize the need to use email for collaboration. The acquisition pits Salesforce against competitive productivity platforms such as Google Drive, Google Apps, and Microsoft Office 365.
Salesforce's Demandware acquisition, announced in early June, was one of the biggest in the company's history at $2.8 billion. Demandware will serve as the base for the new Salesforce Commerce Cloud and be part of the company's Customer Success Platform. Demandware's e-commerce platform has provided the online retail engine behind brands including Lands' End, L'Oreal, and Marks & Spencer. Salesforce said it expects the Demandware acquisition to increase its revenue by roughly $100 million to $120 million for fiscal 2017.
Salesforce acquired two-year-old startup Implisit in May for a price reported to be "tens of millions" of dollars. The company analyzes CRM, calendar, and email data to provide organizations with actionable insights to improve sales. For instance, it can predict the best possible deals and identify those most at risk.
Salesforce acquired MetaMind in April. This startup, which had been financially backed by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, was working on deep learning for automated image recognition.
Salesforce snapped up open source machine learning startup PredictionIO in February. The company offered an open source machine learning server for software developers to use in creating predictive features such as personalization, recommendation, and content discovery.
Salesforce acquired MinHash in Dec. 2015. MinHash has described itself as providing data science for enterprises, but it is perhaps best known for its AILA virtual marketing assistant. AILA was designed to crawl the internet to pull out relevant trends for marketers and help them create campaigns around those trends.
Salesforce acquired SteelBrick in Dec. 2015. This company is more along the traditional line of sales tools, providing "next generation quote-to-cash apps" that are built natively on the Salesforce platform. SteelBrick's Configure Price Quote (CPQ) tool generates sales quotes, proposals, orders, and contracts.
Salesforce acquired SteelBrick in Dec. 2015. This company is more along the traditional line of sales tools, providing "next generation quote-to-cash apps" that are built natively on the Salesforce platform. SteelBrick's Configure Price Quote (CPQ) tool generates sales quotes, proposals, orders, and contracts.
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